rm: Honestly, it didn’t. It wasn’t until the following year, 1999, that I really saw how books could alter one’s own life and writing life when I published three poetry collections throughout the year, and spent a couple of months touring around the country to promote them. It was a hard lesson to learn, seeing just how little the whole thing meant, in certain ways, despite all the ways that the books were, at the same time, allowing me an amount of confidence that I hadn’t earlier.

For whatever reason, I had been writing full-time for a number of years before even the first poetry collection came out, so there were ways in which they didn’t change my life at all, those first couple of books. I think what did change was the way people started regarding me, perhaps taking me slightly more seriously as “writer” because I finally had books. It was as though some of them were finally believing what I had been telling them for years.

2 - How long have you lived in Ottawa, and how does geography, if at all, impact on your writing? Does race or gender make any impact on your work?

rm: Geography, certainly. I think geography can’t help but influence, even if just stylistically. If you are writing a particular kind of genre, style, etcetera, it’s difficult to not be influenced by the writing that is happening around you. The kinds of poems that excite me aren’t necessarily the kinds of poems that Arc magazine publish (being the only trade game in town, it’s impossible to not use them as a kind of “local standard”), but there are certainly aspects there and here that wash over me. Being born here but heading east an hour’s drive, I didn’t actually return to the city until I was nineteen, way back in the fall of 1989. But for my Edmonton year, I’ve remained in the city since, and don’t really feel much need to leave (although a few more writer-in-residence gigs would be pretty cool; I’m kind of amazed at what I can finally accomplish with resources…).

3 - Where does a poem or piece of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

rm: I think, back in the early to mid 1990s, I was the author of individual poems and individual pieces. Since having a dozen or two poetry chapbooks before my first trade collection was published, I’ve been thinking in larger units for so long, that even my occasional poems turn out into occasional books. What little I’ve tried in the genre of short story/short fiction even manages to want to work itself larger, into the book as the unit of composition.

4 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process?

rm: Completely both, and sometimes at the same time. I never read anything out loud until I’m on stage, since I hear so much of it in my head as I’m working. I really like doing readings and going to readings, but I’m not always in the mood, even if I’m supposed to be doing a reading myself. I think I’ve done so many over the years, that I think I can still manage to read quite well even if I think I’ve managed to butcher everything I have in front of me. I’ve done hundreds of readings over the past near-20 years, but still manage to get completely messed up about them. I have no idea why. They still manage to both build and completely destroy my confidence.

5 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

rm: I’ve been floating around that question for years. I think a poem is what is left after decades and even centuries of stripping away. When the poets were second only to the Scottish Chiefs, they were the historians and storytellers. With the advent of novels, daily newspapers, CNN, creative non-fiction, film, what is the “poem” left with? Language itself.

6 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

7 - After having published more than a couple of titles over the years, do you find the process of book-making harder or easier?

rm: I would have to say both. I have certainly more confidence in trying something that I know might not work unless I really push it, but I’m far harder on myself than I was even five years ago. I have far more work now that never makes it past the notebook, past the first printed draft, past the stack of manuscript pages. If it can’t be better or more than the previous work, why bother?

8 - When was the last time you ate a pear?

rm: I can’t even remember that far back.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction to critical/creative non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?

rm: When I was a kid, I never really saw much of a division between any of it, whether writing poetry and short stories, playing music or drawing and taking photographs, all of which floated around my high school years. For whatever reason, once Kate was born, I decided to focus on one thing, poetry, and get a handle on that before I tried to move out into anything else. In hindsight, I think anyone else might have tried for the “big novel,” but apparently I’m not like everyone else. I’ve never wanted to simply do one thing, so why not? I think the appeal is that each genre brings its own set of concerns, its own set of problems and its own set of openings, all of which can be twisted around if you work in more than one concern. My poetry, for example, has become less “storytelling” since I’ve been working on fiction, and my reviews have turned into longer and longer essays. Now I’m delving more into memoir/creative non-fiction so I can see where that might take me.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

rm: A typical day begins with waking up.

I’m a big fan of routine, so anyone who knows me can usually find me pretty easily, despite my deliberate lack of cellphone or office or anything like that. I wake up, and go straight to writing desk. In Ottawa, that’s around 10:30am. In Alberta, with the 35-minute walk, it was more of a 10am when I got to my office (roughly), where I checked email, got the day started, and a couple of hours of desk before breakfast/lunch, and wrote longhand in public spaces such as the grad bar, RATT, and/or in the HUB Mall, before a few more hours of office on computer, entering new versions and printing them up, and then at the Garneau Pub on 109th Street by 7pm to scribble all over typed versions, do more longhand, and get random reading done. Now that I’m back in Ottawa, it’s back to writing at home for a few hours with coffee, email on Bank Street around 3pm, and then the Second Cup at Bank and Somerset for a couple of hours before either home to the computer, or to Pubwell’s (or even in the big food court at the Rideau Centre) for a bit more writing time. Although usually in the summer it gets too damn hot in my apartment to get anything done there during the day, so I’m pretty much at that Second Cup within twenty minutes of waking up. My ex-wife has said for years that you can set a watch to my schedule.

And on Saturdays, I hang out with my lovely daughter, with lunch, a movie and then playing cards or wandering around for a while, talking about all the important nothings.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

13 - How does your most recent book compare to your previous work? How does it feel different?

rm: My last few books haven’t been poetry, but fiction, literary essays and a tourist book, so that’s about as different as you can (potentially) think from poetry. I am hoping that all of this movement across various (arbitrary) lines is opening up and expanding my repertoire.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

rm: Whenever I watch a really well-written movie or television series, it makes me want to re-enter fiction. Usually something like MI-5 (known in England as “Spooks”) or Six Feet Under. Even the movies Smokeor Lulu on the Bridgewere pretty interesting triggers.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

rm: I’ve always made things, even when I was very small. When I was nineteen, I couldn’t afford art supplies, but I could always get my hands on pen and paper. I’ve never really been good at too much of anything else.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?